We fall short when we fail to think for ourselves

Waterloo Region Record

A few weeks ago, I read a news story about a certain GPS-caused event, and it got me thinking.

A motorist was exiting a ferry in Whittier, Alaska, and on the command of his global positioning system he turned his car into the harbour, submerging his Subaru up to the antenna. Thankfully, he wasn’t hurt, but I’ll bet his pride took a beating.

Although it’s humorous, the sad part is that this isn’t the first time someone has failed to think for himself.

Technology is just one example — but a rather large one — of how we don’t always think for ourselves. We depend on our phones, computers and the internet to tell us how to do things instead of taking the time to think through or learn how to do our tasks ourselves.

For example, many people can’t calculate a tip at a restaurant without their trusty phone calculator or the percentage button on the debit machine. How about spelling? I know that I’m guilty of using spellcheck on a regular basis, to the point where I have trouble at times spelling even the simplest words. Looking at any social networking site tells me I’m not alone in my English problems.

While we’re on English, how about grammar? There’s no need to learn how to use a comma, MS Word will just correct me. We tell ourselves that we just can’t be bothered or don’t have enough time to figure out how to do something without technology. Besides, what’s the point of learning tasks such as math, spelling and grammar when technology can do it for us? Honestly, with some smaller, less important, tasks there really isn’t a point.

That being said, the problem arises when that becomes our go-to mentality. When we let our technology think for us, we are often depending for guidance on something that can be wrong. MS Word isn’t the authority on the English language, it can give you the wrong corrections. And as we learned from the man in Alaska, our GPS devices don’t always know the best way.

The seemingly harmless mentality of depending on something else to do our thinking for us can cost us a job, a good grade or, in the case of the man in Alaska, our car. It becomes an even more serious matter when this thinking process translates into a more important aspect of our lives, our beliefs.

The start of a new school year offers the perfect example of how not thinking for ourselves can impact students’ beliefs, our moral compass if you will, and change the way we respond to situations. When listening to a teacher lecture about a controversial topic such as religion or politics, it’s the natural tendency of many students to take the teacher’s words as the indisputable truth, when just like everybody else a teacher can be wrong or misinformed.

The same goes with other authority figures in our society, such as politicians or religious leaders. We let them think for us and too often accept their word without thinking for ourselves. Allowing this to happen can lead to uninformed opinions and decisions that can ultimately turn out very poor results.

There are several ways that we can stop letting people and things do our thinking for us. The first is to ask critical questions such as: “Why does this make sense?,” “Is there another side to this story?” or “Who is going to benefit from this?” Then you should investigate and find the answers to your questions using multiple sources.

The most important thing to do, however, is to just use common sense.

Think about what you are basing your decisions on and ask yourself if it makes sense. Often, you will come to the same conclusion as what you were told, but you will be able to say “I thought this through and know why I decided this,” instead of “My GPS told me to do it.”

Jenna Hazzard is a student at Cameron Heights Collegiate Institute in Kitchener.